More NSA Spying Fallout: Groklaw Shutting Down

More NSA Spying Fallout: Groklaw Shutting Down

More NSA Spying Fallout: Groklaw Shutting Down
from the the-pain-of-being-watched dept
A few months ago, after the NSA spying stories first broke, we wrote about a bit from This American Life where the host, Ira Glass, was interviewing
lawyers for prisoners detained at Guantanamo, about the impact of knowing that the government was listening in on every single phone call you made.
The responses were chilling. The people talked about how it stopped them from being emotional with their children or

other close friends and relatives. How they had trouble functioning in ways that many people take for granted, just because the mental stress
of knowing that you have absolutely no privacy is incredibly burdensome. PJ, the dynamo behind Groklaw, has written a powerful piece explaining the
similar feeling she's getting from all the revelations about government surveillance, in particular the shutting down of Lavabit by Ladar Levison, and
his suggestion that if people knew what he knew about email, they wouldn't use it.

Because of this, she's shutting down Groklaw.

Now this is creating a brutal effect in society - it is called the Chilling Effect:

In a legal context, a chilling effect is the inhibition or discouragement of the legitimate exercise of natural and legal rights by the threat
of legal sanction.[1] The right that is most often described as being suppressed by a chilling effect is the US constitutional right to free speech. A
chilling effect may be caused by legal actions such as the passing of a law, the decision of a court, or the threat of a lawsuit; any legal action
that would cause people to hesitate to exercise a legitimate right (freedom of speech or otherwise) for fear of legal repercussions.

They want you, want me, want everyone to be afraid of speaking up against the tyranny that is coming. They want us to be afraid of thinking for
ourselves, they want us to be obedient little drones.

Well, there is also the opposite effect, I really don't care if they are watching - if they are they know where I am. Come and get me.

Groklaw was an award-winning website covering legal news of interest to the free and open source software community. Started as a law blog on
May 16, 2003 by paralegal Pamela Jones ("PJ") at Radio UserLand, it has covered issues such as the SCO-Linux lawsuits, the EU anti-trust case against
Microsoft, and the standardization of Office Open XML.

Jones describes Groklaw as ..."a place where lawyers and geeks could explain things to each other and work together, so they'd understand each other's
work better. When you have an idea you hope might work, and then to implement it, tweak it, and morph it, because other people show up and have ideas
that are better than yours...and then have people you care about and admire tell you that what you are doing matters – I can't think of a more
satisfying feeling."

Damn,, bye Groklaw. I used to be on Groklaw all the time and they came about when I was getting deep into Linux. Carl McBribe (yes, spelled that way
on purpose) and SCO. Total scumbags. Groklaw put it to them and IBM just absolutely raped then in court. Linux heads and Open Source geeks came out of
the woodwork and F'd them up. But, I honestly think the evil was accomplished anyway. People were really starting to get onto Linux and Open Source
at that time. The whole SCO thing wasn't to win the intellectualproperty rights. I was about derailing a movement. Or at least postponing it. In that
it succeeded.

Time for some American Pie by Don McLean. Only fear and the desire to preserve your job, toys, prestige, and most importantly the ego, shall remain.
No freedom folks. Nobody is willing to sacrifice anything to save their soul. Black is white, up is down, right is wrong, slavery is freedom. Let's
all do the currently vogue thing and enjoy our revisionist and divisonist issues. After all, it's just screw and screw can till it all comes down and
the people scream "why didn't somebody help us?". All the while, they were that somebody.

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